for T.J. (on the occasion of your premiere)


appraise compare conclude contrast criticize
critique defend describe discriminate evaluate
explain interpret justify relate support summarize
a water tower

the verticality
of which enables
more than one

thirst to hover

or so my father sang
the basin aswarm in feathers
a silver cataclysmic tone

how to wrench him now
from the mirrored pillory

and gently bait him back
from gesturer to gesture

until what is important gets chased.

to swim
and feed vessels
lying them on the blanket for perusal

is inhalation: simple as
a sun-defined stone
or the filtered
diagonal
shadows
that cross it.

Before the vaguely criminal use of a bridge


Before the vaguely criminal use of a bridge
40 peripheries enforced: an orange shirt out of control
Embers set the neighbor’s yard on fire
And into a single perspective
a constitution descends the stairs

The photograph of a woven craft
confers the importance of photographing crafts

Cicada, open this ambition
I am frightened of firings
I am moved by cold pocket watches

Confounded by severances
machine ear and eye run as if across a field
Perpendicular, parallel, whisker box
blankets fastened with lynch and pin

Freedom to roll is not freedom to romp
Hence the moving indentions

O’Hare


The plane’s fractured side sends orange through the air-- a glacier flirtatious and grim. Norfolk like a necklace dangles from her ankle. Sunlight streams through her cheek and mouth. When I create a war, I begin my research on the Web. She guides him to an opening whereupon he sees her words writing their own sentences. What would happen if insurgents took over an oil refinery in Nigeria? She places her hair in his brass hands and begins dancing.

Pandora does not deal in fragile vessels. The man in seat 10C –how should we say, an admirer-- would like to buy a drink. Athena graced with wisdom does not take commands. Rossetti prompts his subjects to act hysterical. I have built the armrest into a Lyistratan wall.

We sequester our generals, then have them associate with only those people playing roles. Red flags wrap her waist. I lean my head forward and rest it against a chair. She enters the restroom and draws red lines across her lips. I don’t like this job, she says. I want to quit.

II.

His plate rattles so he looks outside. (Note: let the wire mesh windows be the first signification of what this poem is about). She taps her fork against his glass. Your meal is out of context, she says, I mean, do you really envision animals? Most people have left their seats and have pressed their noses against glass. Within hardwood floors, joints fill with moths, descending stairways, white mansions.

I stand outside and put my hand in a stream. Crawdads are a kind of artillery, mounted with wire mesh windows. I traipse through the forest and scavenge an old mason jar. (Note: pace it as it appears.) Crawdads glide across the bed with light shoves from their legs. I try to get one into my container, so I can hold both up to the light.

Causation doesn’t hold the same sway as it used to, she says. He grabs a top hat from under his chair. Now for the seemingly miraculous replacement of one scene for another. She slaps her palm onto the edge of a towel. Sand falls just short of her plate.

catalogy


beneath the breach, nothing evaporates

the taxidermist being so longwinded and difficult to cast
roars anxiously into a tunneled mouth

I left a hook in the line:
the fish are on strings

A comely vice
above a guilt-ridden floor
or remote collaboration

quick, engendered
fast by any pelican’s standard
is not what record said to arrival

but in such

only half of you will be thrown off

“Kind of like lead,” … “Or something
so axiomatic that even its negation is true”

2.

point of painted view, the difference
between scale and proportion

something huge, like grain approaching

one panel filled, traverse to animism
a mandrake homuncular

or horse child

commingling
amid a sheet of geological tools
tangibly foregrounded

like some great shawl in an etagere

3.

As soon as the footage ends
youth’s club meets curtain

another medic or mother unpublishable

the history of horsepower expelled in sight

a gallery for cameras

“Describe your emotion through the emotions of another”
The only thing I want is “for my worst case scenario to be better”

At the cusp, a generative sea floor—
or such treacherous rocketwater

4.

When beautiful duchess’s grandfather died,
she snuck into his closet
and stole his Styrofoam legs

even this

Her grandmother pierced butterflies
to make the table arrangements flap

lady, circus-crush this hammock
into metonym or obelisk
so filled with company

“Onset” promoted
“Offspring” unwrapped

angels baptized
before jaundice

ideas singe moments
and dice will flow where they will

5.

dusty harbor of strange sticks
are you earth or geologist?

From the basement, permits
to touch unpainted sculptures

didactic or otherwise cross-legged

an electrical outlet makes the bed possible

the moon looks so ridiculous again

6.

being subsumed, a cardiac quill
enters a chorus of beards

each thought contains a thousand ignorable vistas
and one California diner

what is operative is often
the static point of relation

a salt shaker, for instance

then all metal washers
seeping temperature into your hand

7.

Today in Topsail
“we hear them speak of danger”

like a familiar object’s analytic slimness

withdraw or lose the canister
proceed or be thrust before the biting

the earth makes tiles when we speak

our protagonist
whose chief characteristic is never to be used
taunts her incorrectness
taking pains to affix

a hidden yellow story

black integer


black integer
shallow waves

undertows integral
and crowned

janitors comporting
husks of hands

floating
untethered

crows then
maypoles

lassoes and paper
thin joints

light now
tissue now

a junk horse
rebuilding

parts of speech (revolting)


is a lobby
in a lobby

no one
but copper and half

police are frost
so that edgewise

as our best catwalk
or teeth fellowing

a monocle-made city

2.

S-hook
oh Amy

not left
but going

how they skirt Gibraltar

yawning asunder
a circular frame

profiteers in blue/red dresses

3.

a wooden chair
made boy-like

amid tape
accidental and pining

caesuras and
such blunt nets